


This Isn't Me or You

by Katydid_99



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (not that Luther recognizes it), Age Regression/De-Aging, Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Body Modification, Canon-Typical Behavior, Dolores is a good maniquin wife, Gen, Let Five Say Fuck 2019, Luther's gorilla body, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Child Abuse, Post Episode 3, Reginald Hargreeves's A+ Parenting, canon age regression, vague mentions of the apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 04:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17860175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katydid_99/pseuds/Katydid_99
Summary: This isn't Five's body.This isn't Luther's body, either.Maybe they can reach a common ground...





	This Isn't Me or You

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers: depictions of body dysmorphia and canon-typical discussions of abuse and non-consensual body modification

When he was alive, Reginald Hargreeves wore cologne. This wasn’t a particularly odd or extraordinary practice. He was a man, and a man of taste at that. But being such the man he was, not just any cologne would do. It had no brand. No famous designer’s name on the bottle. It was created in a small batch by a secret genius who had died long before his genius could be discovered. Sir Hargreeves would be shipped a new bottle every five years from a limited supply stored halfway around the world. Growing up, his seven so-called children came to associate the smell with their so-called father. Even his office, under the smell of wood polish and parchment, would smell like Madagascar vanilla and grapefruit and cedars chopped down from the Black Forest of Germany with just a hint of musk.

It smelled, as Klaus had once so elegantly put it, like old man in a bottle. Wealthy, eccentric old man, but old man nonetheless.

And it was this bottle that Five wanted to find more than anything else.

“Well, I can _see_ that it’s not here,” he strained to Delores, who was watching him from the bed while he cleared Dad’s vanity. “I just don’t see where else it could be!”

Quickly he ported to his private bathroom and started digging through his medicine chest. Within seven minutes Five had learned what brand of toothpaste Dad was using and every prescription he was on, but found no cologne.

Angrily, he slammed the cabinet shut and ported back to the bedroom, breathing hard. Belatedly he noticed the full length mirror to his left.

Five sucked in a strained breath and faced the ornate glass. He didn’t see his reflection. In its place was a light-boned child in a schoolboy uniform who happened to have his eyes; slightly-more haunted looking than what the boy used to have.

It was a vertigo-inducing trip, looking at himself. It wasn’t him. He hadn’t been that boy in over forty years. He was barely that boy when he was pretending to be that boy. His fingers skimmed their way over his face. No bumps, no wrinkles- the flesh had forgotten all of its contours. It was too tight; the skin too fitted over his body. It felt like he was wearing three wetsuits at the same time. Tight. Constricting. Suffocating.

From the bed, Delores commented that she though he looked handsome no matter what.

Sighing, Five turned to her with a tired smile. “Not really the point here, dear, but thanks.”

“What are you doing in here?” a much deeper voice answered. Luther stood in the doorway, blinking in confused disbelief at the scene.

“What?” Five scoffed. “You haven’t raided this hell hole for anything salvageable yet?”

“Why would I do that? We already live here.”

Five rolled his eyes and turned back to the mirror. Pulled up his socks a little higher. Like that only a thin strip of skin showed between the hems of the socks and his shorts. Almost like pants.

Maybe if he tugged his shorts a little lower…?

No, that looked stupid. More stupid than the shorts already did anyhow.

“You don’t have to wear that if you don’t want to,” Luther said slowly, twisting and ducking slightly to enter the room. “We’ve got money. We could go get you something you’d feel more… comfortable in?”

The world was ending in six days. Whether or not Five felt “comfortable” in his own skin was not of importance.

Then why bother with the cologne?

He shot a glare at Dolores. Her painted eyes stared back in their usual bored, sultry expression. “Whatever.”

Luther sighed. “Look, I know this is a little weird. For everyone, but for you especially. But it’s got to be- I mean-“ he gestured lamely at Five, who in turn narrowed his eyes at him. “It can’t be that bad.”

Five’s thin film of patience melted like a snowflake on the sun as he instantly ported from the mirror to standing on the bed, staring furiously into Luther’s startled eyes. Even standing on top of the bed he had to look up at his brother, which only fueled his rage.

“How many thirteen-year-olds do you know who could survive the apocalypse? Huh? None, right? I don’t know any either because I didn’t go on being thirteen. I _grew up._ That’s what people do, Luther. They adapt, and survive, and they don’t throw that all away to be fucking thirteen! I’m old because I _survived_ and earned that. _I fucking earned that!_ ”

“I think you need to sit down now,” Luther said quietly, pale gaze steady as always.

Five didn’t want to listen to him- he was using that cool “listen to me because I’m Number One” tone that made Five want to punch him- but Delores called to him softly, tenderly. He glared at Luther once more, sniffled, then dropped onto the bed and pulled Delores into his lap. They hugged tightly, her cool plastic touch like a salve.

“This isn’t my body,” he mumbled. “You of all people should understand that.”

Above him, Luther stiffened and pulled his shirt collar a little higher. “How did you know- who told-?” Then he groaned and sat next to him on the bed, the mattress groaning in harmony. “Dammit, Diego.”

“Always so quick to assume. I found your body, remember? Don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing it’s been like that for a while?”

He wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Instead he fidgeted and hid his vaguely humanoid fingers between his thighs. “About a year before I went to space. Dad sent me on a mission and I got hurt, badly. He’d been working on this serum and… well, it worked.”

Very slowly, Five let Delores go and stared up at his brother with new perspective and new rage. Finally, after a minute, “That bastard.”

Luther whipped his head to the side, astonished. “I’m sorry?”

“You heard me! You get a little banged up and he decides to play Mad Scientist on you?”

“I almost died! He did it to save my life!”

“You almo- you weren’t even AWAKE when he did it?!?” Five hopped off the bed and paced back and forth a few times. He imagined Dad doing the same to him. Falling asleep one night and waking up with the cracking voice and awkward knees he currently possessed. He shook his head, blood rumbling behind his ears. “Did he at least have consent?”

“Huh?”

“Jesus- was there ever a point where when Dad asked you to test it? Or even ordered you? I’m willing to go as far as that at this point. ‘Number One, would you mind so terribly if I destroy your humanity a smidge?’”

“‘Asked me to-‘ I didn’t know! They explained everything to me after the procedure.”

“So, what? You just woke up on a gurney with your head attached to a mutant gorilla?”

He meant that as an exaggeration, but the way Luther bit his lip and sunk between his huge shoulders told him everything.

“Oh my God! How do you not see how fucked up that is? What if it didn’t work? What if it _killed_ you? For the love of God, how is this any different than drugging or raping you? Or did he already do that, too?”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Luther whispered.

Five stood across from him and folded his arms. “You’re not disagreeing,” he countered.

Self-righteous bastard he was, there were few time Luther was managed to get caught speechless. As he studied the patterns in the carpet and curled further in on his shoulders, Five felt a wave of smug satisfaction roll over his storm of disgust and outrage.

Finally, Luther took a deep breath and said, “Dad loved us. What happened happened. It’s fine. I’ve adapted and it’s fine.”

A scoff escaped Five’s lips. “Yeah, let’s leave the lying to Allison, huh?”

“Who’s quick to assume now?” Luther said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m okay with it. Honest.”

“If you were fine with it, you wouldn't be wearing a trenchcoat and gloves indoors. In March. And you wouldn’t practically run away whenever Allison touches you.” Five circled the bed and sat on the opposite edge. “I remember how you two would look at each other. I’m old, not senile.”

Caught without words for the second time in one day, Luther gave a mighty sigh and lied back on the bed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. The sight was somewhat less satisfying than last time.

Delores gave Five a knowing look and he sighed.

“Look,” he started, softer. “You don’t have to share my thoughts about Dad. But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be mad about it.”

He didn’t say anything, and for a moment Five thought he hadn’t heard him and considered leaving, but then:

“I forgot how heavy everything felt on the moon. It feels like I’m going to sink through the floor at any moment all the time-”

“-my forehead may be permanently bruised from all the doorframes I’ve hit so far-”

“-it was lonely as hell, but at least there weren’t people commenting on how big I was every other minute-”

“-and now Allison wants me to meet Claire, and I’m like, ‘Jesus Christ! What’s a six-year-old gonna think about _this-?!?’”_

“-but the worst of it is that sometimes I forget what my body looks like. It’s like a have an image in my head of what I’m supposed to look like, and sometime I really believe I look like that… but then I look down or see my reflection… and I just wanna throw up…”

“God… I sound like a lunatic, don’t I?

Five listened to all of this without interrupting. Some of it was pretty specific, but some of it- the confusion, the listlessness, the sense of personal disgust- was worryingly familiar. He felt like he’d just swallowed a pound of lead.

“Ooh, what’s going on in here?”

The pair looked up from the bed to find Klaus hanging against the door jam, alternating between a joint in one hand and a heart-shaped lollipop in the other. His eyes and tongue were both bright red.

While Luther was caught like a deer in headlights, Five looked over Klaus’s ensemble of black latex pants and Mom’s turquoise cardigan with the gold clasp (no shirt underneath) and decided, for once, it would be safe to be honest.

“Body dysmorphia.”

“Oof, join the club. Lemme know if another seat opens.” He stuck the sucker back in his mouth, flashed the “ _GOODBYE”_ tattoo on the inside of his palm, and sauntered off down the hall. His footsteps, Five noticed, clicked against the hardwood.

“Were those…?”

“Allison’s shoes? Probably. Yeah.”

Each surprise not willing to be outdone by the last that day, Five found himself chuckling, with Luther giggling right alongside him. For a brief, shining moment, everything felt almost okay. They were just themselves, and there was nothing odd about that at all.

Luther pushed himself to a sitting position and turned back to look at Five, his brow furrowed but mouth curve slightly upward. “You know what’s the weirdest thing about all this? I just told you all the worst thoughts I’ve had… but I feel better.”

The moment had passed almost as soon as it had started, pain and ruin taking their rightful forefront in his mind, but as Five leaned back against the bed’s headboard and stared at the ceiling, he found it in himself to smile.  

“Yeah… I think I do, too.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love Five with all my heart and soul. There's just something about this jaded old man character in a tweenage body that I find so strange but so tragic and so fun to watch.
> 
> Luther is... more complicated.  
> All of them deal with their childhood abuse in different ways. Diego is angry, Vanya is withdrawn, Klaus is... well, Klaus, but Luther is in denial. No matter what his father did to him (from pitting him against his siblings to physically modifying him without his consent to literally exiling to the moon), he still insists that it was for the best and that he loved him. This is a very real way some people cope, and it's gut-wrenching to watch especially as he clearly struggles with the results of this life. While I don't really like or dislike him at this point, I do find him interesting.


End file.
